1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Commentary

In Advent God’s dearly beloved people think about the ways in which God has graciously come, is coming and will come to us. However, during the month of December Jesus’ friends especially expend a lot of energy thinking about his first coming. The Church, at its best, also tries to direct at least some of our attention to his second coming.

But I sense that even in Advent we often pay less attention to the way God also comes to God’s adopted children here and now. That’s regrettable, in part because the Scriptures don’t just invite Jesus’ friends to look back to his first coming and ahead to his second. They also summon us to, in a real sense, look around for and at all the ways Christ’s Spirit comes to us in every time and place. Those who only look back and ahead to God’s comings run a risk of overlooking all the ways God already graces us with God’s presence.

On the first Sunday in December worshipers may feel disappointed if not frustrated that the RCL’s Epistolary Lesson pays so little attention to what they may already be paying much attention: our celebration of Jesus’ first coming. Its Paul, after all, never mentions anything like angels, worshiping shepherds, lowing cattle or silent babies.

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13’s dearth of attention to Jesus’ incarnation may even add fuel to the flames of the age-old fire that revolves around how long churches should wait to begin singing Christmas carols. The apostle pays a bit of attention to the kind of Thanksgiving Americans just celebrated. But that’s so … last month. We’re done with singing, praying and saying our thanks. Let’s get on with singing about the baby Jesus!

During Advent preachers might at least allude to Jesus’ followers’ natural impatience with preaching that doesn’t mention Jesus’ first coming. But we might also note that our text’s Paul doesn’t demand that we exclusively wait for God’s coming in Christ. While December can be a time, especially for Jesus’ younger friends to think about waiting, the apostle at least alludes to that for which we don’t have to wait: God’s coming to us in this time and space.

The apostle begins this Lesson by voicing his thanksgiving for his Thessalonian readers. “How can we [dynametha*],” he sings in verse 9, “thank God [eucharistian to Theo] for you in return for all the joy [pase te chara] in the presence of God [emprosthen tou Theou] because of you.” He literally rejoices before God because of Thessalonica’s Christians. Paul links the apostles’ thanks for the Christians in Thessalonica to the joy they feel before God.

In fact, Paul’s writes that his fellow Christians give him such deep joy that his colleagues and he long to return to them. In verse 10 he tells them that “Night and day [nyktos kai hemeras]” he, Silas and Timothy “pray most earnestly [hyperekperissou deomenoi] that” they “may see the Thessalonians’ again and supply what is lacking [katatarisai ta hysteremata] in your faith.” The apostles constantly beg God to help them see the Thessalonians’ faces again so that they can both bolster their faith when it lags and infuse the apostles with even greater joy before God.

Paul and his colleagues don’t mention the source of the joy they feel because of the Thessalonians’ faith or the source of that faith. But the Scriptures consistently teach Jesus’ friends that such joy and faith is rooted in the work of the Holy Spirit who graciously comes to God’s people. After all, while countless things and people may make Christian happy, the joy and faith about which the apostles write are both gifts from God’s Spirit. Where God hasn’t come by God’s Spirit, there can be neither true joy nor faith.

Yet God’s current and ongoing coming to which Paul, Silas and Timothy allude in verses 9 and 10 they make more explicit in verses 11-13. “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way [kateuthynai ten hodon] for us to come to you.” (11). This suggests that there are obstacles to the apostles’ return to Thessalonica. While Paul and his co-workers don’t identify those barriers, we can imagine that they included both physical distance and the apostles’ responsibilities to Jesus’ friends in other places.

But Paul, Timothy and Silas’ point is clear. They long for God to graciously come and clear away all the obstacles that prevent them from returning to their fellow adopted siblings in Christ in Thessalonica. They need the Lord to come to them like a bulldozer to clear a path through those barriers to Thessalonica’s Christians.

For Americans, this may recall what workers are doing to clear obstructions in roads created by his fall’s hurricanes. Just as many North Carolinians currently can’t “get to here from there” without someone to clear the way for them, Paul, Silas and Timothy can’t get to Thessalonica without God making a way for them. While the impediments to their return are great, they trust that God is even greater. So the apostles beg God to graciously come to them in their time and space to clear a path for them to return to Thessalonica.

However, in the meantime, they write in verse 12, “May the Lord make your love [agape] increase [pleonasai] and overflow [perisseusai] for each other and everyone else [eis pantas], just as ours does for you.” In other words, Paul, Silas and Timothy long for the Lord to come to Thessalonica’s Christians to make their love for their fellow Christians increase so much that it spills onto those who haven’t yet received God’s grace with their faith. As The Message so lyrically paraphrases this benediction, “May the Master pour on the love so that it fills your lives and splashes over on everyone around you, just as it does for us to you.”

Only in verse 13 do the apostles finally “get around to” writing about Jesus’ second coming to which the Church looks forward during Advent. But even then, the apostles refer to ways that God already comes to God’s dearly beloved people to prepare us for that coming. “May he strengthen [sterixai] your hearts [kardias],” write Paul, Silas and Timothy in verse 13, “so that you will be blameless [amemptous] and holy [hagiosyne] in the presence [emprosthen] of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes [parousia] with all his holy ones [hagion].”

Here the apostles refer to a link between Jesus’ followers “hearts” and lives. Our hearts are that place where we offer our loyalties and from which we make our decisions about how to live our lives. Paul and his colleagues pray that God will come to the Thessalonian Christians to graciously deepen their commitment to doing God’s will by loving God above all and their neighbors as themselves.

But preachers want to be careful not to even hint that Christians obey God so that we will be good enough to be ready for Jesus’ return. Even the saintliest of us have only the smallest beginnings of such obedience. So the apostles may be at least suggesting that as we find the Lord transforming our hearts and lives, we find that our fear of meeting the coming Christ in the air shrinks.

God’s adopted children’s confidence at Christ’s return lies not in our holiness and blamelessness, but in God’s constant coming to us to transform our lives. The Message alludes to that grace when it paraphrases the apostles’ plea in verse 13 as “May you be infused with strength and purity, filled with confidence in the presence of our God and Father when our Master Jesus arrives with all his followers.” That’s Jesus’ followers’ prayer for ourselves and our fellow Christians as we celebrate, notice and anticipate God’s comings to us.

*I have here and subsequently added in brackets the Greek words for the English words many modern translations use.

Illustration

When Paul and his colleagues pray that God will make Thessalonica’s Christians love increase and their hearts strong, he’s essentially begging God to sanctify them. The biblical scholar Frederick Buechner wrote extensively about that work of the Holy Spirit. In both Wishful Thinking and Beyond Words he wrote, “In ‘Beauty and the Beast’ it is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful.

“In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike. Paul’s word for this gradual transformation of a sow’s ear into a silk purse is sanctification, and he sees it as the second stage in the process of salvation.

“Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it there are few if any who don’t drag their feet most of the way.

“But little by little — less by taking pains than by taking it easy — the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.”